She does not have to speak, for I see the answer in her eyes, but she does anyway. “My work is done now, child. As Balthazar said, it is time for a new generation to stop the evil that is stirring in the shadows.”
My breath catches, and tears fill my eyes. “No, Mother,” I protest. “I cannot do it without you.”
She lifts my chin. “Within you lies strength yet to be discovered, Jess. Like your father . . . and your mother. Never forget that.”
I bid her farewell an hour later.
I will be on my own. I said I would stay and fight.
What overcame me?
Now I sense the weight of those words, a promise I cannot break.
I wait with Mother on the railway platform. Balthazar has already said his farewell and now stands a few steps away to give us one more moment alone. There is a nip in the air, and the coolness I feel on my skin is a balm to the heat that spreads in my chest. Red and orange leaves swirl on the ground and up into the air. Mother takes my hands in hers. “Be safe, my child.”
I sniffle, but hold back my tears.
“Remember,” she says—?and I glimpse that fierceness I saw when she cracked the lash—?“you are your father’s daughter, Jess.”
Jess.
I hear the whistle of the train and the screech of the wheels. My eyes are misting over, but I try to be strong for her—?and Papa.
A moment later she is gone. Balthazar comes to stand beside me. “Cora and Alexander could not have asked for a braver daughter,” he says, looking down the tracks. A lingering wisp of smoke rises higher and higher until it disappears. “There is no greater cause than to destroy evil where it breeds.”
I agree, but deep down inside, I wonder if I have made the right choice.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The League of Ravens
A knock at the door awakens me. Sunlight streams in through the cracked window. For a moment I don’t know where I am, until I look around the small room and get my bearings. I’m in London, here to fight necromancers.
And then I remember.
Mother.
I have never spent a day without seeing her. It is a strange feeling, this distance between us. Whatever is to come, I hope it is resolved quickly and things will soon return to how they were.
“Who is it?” I call, rising from bed.
“Emily,” a voice rings out.
I walk to the door in my nightdress and open it a crack. It is indeed Emily, with her white-blond hair and startling blue eyes. “Balthazar wants you,” she says.
I find this rather impolite, but nod reflexively and close the door. My clothes are becoming quite spoiled, but I have no other option than to wear the ones I arrived in. Perhaps Mother will be able to send some of my favorite things from home.
I walk down the stairs slowly, wondering what this is all about. My heart flutters as I step into the sitting room.
“So you have arisen,” Balthazar greets me, rising from the table. “I trust you slept well?”
“I did,” I say, although I did not. The bed has left a creak in my back. “Thank you.”
He gestures toward the table laden with food: toast and jam, bowls of porridge, a rasher of ham, a few withered-looking apples—?and tea, of course. We are in England, after all. There does not seem to be a proper dining room—?just the sitting room and the parlor—?so this area must suffice as one. My former governess would be horrified.
I take a seat between Emily and Gabriel and reach for a slice of toast. Gabriel sits quietly and drinks his tea with careful sips, his little black book next to him. He does give me a slight smile, however, more so than upon our first meeting. Progress, I think. Emily says nothing but attacks the food as if she is famished.
After breakfast, Balthazar calls us into the parlor, where a fire is burning in the grate. He eyes each of us in turn. What is he doing? I wonder. It seems like forever before he finally speaks. “Now that the three of you are here,” he begins, “I want you to hear a tale.”
Emily and Gabriel sit cross-legged by the fire, as if it is story time. I take a seat, and with the sound of a crackling fire as accompaniment, Balthazar begins his story.
“Many years ago, here in London lived a man named Malachai Grimstead. He had a brilliant and clever mind and was known in the scientific and medical communities of the day as a keen scholar. Indeed, he was a friend, and we often spent hours discussing the merits of science and philosophy.”
“Did he know you was a faerie?” Emily asks. The heat from the fire on her face has turned her cheeks as red as apples.
“He did not, Emily. He was a man of science and intellect. It would have been too fantastical a story for him, and I did not want to explain or prove the existence of my kind to anyone.”
He says this rather fiercely, and his eyes take on a sudden gleam.
“As the years passed, our friendship waned, for Malachai began to delve into subjects I found . . . revolting.”
He pauses, as if waiting.
“What subjects?” I finally ask.
Balthazar leans forward in his chair and lowers his voice, as if relishing the horror of his tale. “The dead.”